


Architects

by martianwahtney



Series: A Million Dreams (For the World We're Gonna Make) [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Lance (Voltron), Black Paladin Lance (Voltron), F/M, Galra Emperor Keith, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Kuron is Shiro (Voltron)'s Clone, Minor Character Death, Minor Lance/Allura (Voltron), Not Canon Compliant, Shiro (Voltron) Needs a Hug, Voltron Spoilers, You Have Been Warned, post- Voltron season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 17:38:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13885800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/martianwahtney/pseuds/martianwahtney
Summary: Where Keith partakes in the Kral Zera and somehow comes out victorious. After assuming the throne he stumbles upon Operation Kuron, and things devolve from there.





	Architects

Keith dragged himself up the stairs. He was so tired. The explosion had knocked a lot out of him, then fighting some of the Galra’s most dangerous General’s on top of that had nearly been too much. But he had endured and pushed through the pain. He couldn’t trust Lotor on the throne. He had Voltron to back him. He had the Blade of Marmora. He had the coalition.  
  
He reached the Archivist and threw the purple flame down. Behind closed eyes he saw the purple flames and felt heat explode around him. His shoulder sagged and his legs almost gave out under him.  
  
The Archivist stared in shock as the Kral Zera lit. The flame that could only be lit by one of Galran heritage. The human stood in front, Blade of Marmora uniform torn and bloody. The Archivist turned to the war torn battlefield, most of the competition was dead or had already fled.  
  
“All hail Emperor Keith Kogane,”

  
  


Keith lounged on the Galran throne, one leg tossed carelessly over the arm. He was absentmindedly twirling a small knife. Next to him, Red was lying down. A terrifying reminder of the firepower Keith had in his corner. 

  
  
  
  


“Hey. What’s this?” Keith asked curiously, pointing to a heavily encrypted file called ‘Operation Kuron’. Kolivan shrugged.  
  
“Looks like something the witch cooked up,”  
  
Keith groaned. They hadn’t found Haggar yet, nor Lotor’s generals. Keith grabbed his communication device that worked eerily like a cell-phone and called Pidge.  
  
“Yes oh Terrifying Galran Emperor?” the young Paladin asked.  
  
Keith had given up on asking her to stop with the names.  
  
“Can you figure out what Operation Kuron is? Kolvian thinks it has something to do with the witch,”  
  
“Whatever you ask of me, my Liege,”  
  
Keith closed his eyes.  
  
“Oh! Is that Keith? Hi Keith!” he heard Hunk yell.  
  
“Hi Hunk,” Keith called back.  
  
“Anyway, Pidge?”  
  
“Yea, yea. Hunk help me hack into something called Operation Kuron,” Pidge said before she hung up.  
  
“Kids these days,” a new voice mused. Keith looked up sharply to see Lance lounging by Red’s snoozing mass.  
  
“So disrespectful to Emperor’s,”  
  
“What are you doing here?” Keith asked, fighting off a smile.  
  
“Just wanted to see my beautiful girl,” Lance replied, fondly rubbing his hand over Red’s massive nose.  
  
“Plus I wanted to see how the new Emperor was,”  
  
“I’m stressed,” Keith said shortly.  
  
“But we are kicking a lot of Galra ass,”  
  
“Shouldn’t you… not be fighting your own people?”  
  
“We’re fighting the Zarkon Loyalists, those who are still enslaving planets and peoples even though I put out an executive order for them to stop,”  
  
“Does no one respect the word of an Emperor these days? First Pidge and now the Galrans,”  
  
Keith actually laughed at that.  
  
“So what have I missed with Voltron?”  
  
Lance grinned and launched into the story.

  


“How’s work on Operation Kuron?” Keith asked.  
  
“Slow. Then Hunk and Matt helped me break through a few walls,” Pidge said shortly.  
  
“Haggar really didn’t want anyone to know what it was,”  
  
“Do you know anything?”  
  
“As far as I can tell Haggar wanted to spy on us using a clone,” Pidge said, squinting at her screen.  
  
“What? It’s a good thing she never got to,”  
  
“Well. That’s the thing. Based on everything I’ve read… it looks like Operation Kuron has been in motion for months now,” Pidge told him.  
  
“Who?” Keith asked lowly.  
  
“I don’t know. But I think I know where they’re being kept,”

  


Keith took Lance and Shiro with him. If one of the Paladins was one of Haggar’s pawns, he figured it would be one of them, the Black Lion, and the Black Lion’s right hand man. If Keith was right… it could end very badly.  
  
“This way,” Shiro sounded confident.  
  
“How do you know?” Lance hissed, he hadn’t dropped his gun since they landed on the planet.  
  
“Pidge sent a map,”  
  
Lance narrowed his eyes but didn’t comment further. What sentries they encountered in the base they defeated with ease. Shiro led through down the halls and to a large metal door. Keith and Shiro managed to pry the doors open to reveal a man on a metal slab hooked up to dangerous looking machines.  
  
The man on the metal slab was Shiro. Lance had his gun trained on the clone- Kuron?- in a matter of seconds.  
  
“I… no! I’m Shiro!” Kuron protested.  
  
Keith made quick work of unhooking Shiro from the machines. Shiro groaned and Keith helped him sit up.  
  
“Keith!” Lance warned.  
  
“It’s Shiro!”  
  
“We don’t know that,”  
  
“What?”  
  
“What if this is a trick? What if there wasn’t a clone spying on us and the witch just wanted us to think there was?”  
  
Keith stepped away from the man on the metal slab. Lance was right.  
  
“How are we supposed to figure it out?” Keith asked.  
  
“Lance?” Shiro-on-the-slab asked.  
  
“Y- you heard me!” he said breathlessly.  
  
Keith watched Lance stiffen, but he didn’t move.  
  
“In the mind-meld, what do you remember?” Lance asked to the Shiro he was pointing his gun at.  
  
“I told you I don’t!”  
  
“And you?” Lance asked to the Shiro-on-the-slab.  
  
“I… I called out to you. Tried to tell you I was stuck,” he said in a weak voice. Lance nodded once, not wavering from his stance.  
  
“Lance?” Keith asked cautiously.  
  
“He’s the real one,” Lance said with a head-nod to the Shiro-on-the-slab. Keith was at his side in an instant, helping him off the metal slab.  
  
“I should have put the pieces together,” Lance said, his shoulders taught, his gaze never leaving his target.  
  
“His hair was too long for such a short time in captivity, the way he’s been acting lately, but what really cemented my hunch was that he seemed to know this place. Because you escaped from here, didn’t you?” Lance asked to the clone- Kuron?  
  
Kuron glanced up, his eyes were yellow. Keith pushed himself in front of Shiro, ready to fight. Kuron shot forward. Lance took a deep breath and fired. Kuron hit the wall behind him with a sickening crunch and fell to the floor, his eyes blank an unmoving.  
  
Keith’s communication device started to ring.  
  
“Hey! Operation Kuron just went offline! What happened?” Pidge asked, her voice tinny through the speaker.  
  
Lance turned and puked next to the metal slab. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and grimaced.  
  
“I’ve uh… only ever killed sentries this close… certainly not a Galran and definitely not someone who looks identical to my teammate,” Lance said.  
  
“You did good,” Keith said.  
  
Lance smiled weakly.  
  
“Let’s get him back to the Castle,”  
  
They both helped Shiro back to Red. Lance flew her through a wormhole and back to the castle. Shiro slept for most of the ride and Keith stayed at his side.  
  
“What happened?” Allura asked the second Lance slid out of his lion.  
  
“Shiro was the clone,”  
  
“What?” she demanded as she watched Keith help Shiro out of the lion. Coran greeted them and helped Keith get Shiro out of the room and to a healing pod.  
  
“Or… the old Shiro was the clone. It was called Operation Kuron. This is the real one,” Lance said. Allura frowned in confusion.  
  
“How can you be certain?”  
  
“Well the other one had glowing yellow eyes,”  
  
“I can see how that could clarify a few things,” she agreed.  
  
“The clone?”  
  
Lance’s hand clenched into a fist as he fought against the nausea rising in his stomach.  
  
“I took care of him,”  
  
“Lance?” she asked softly.  
  
He glanced up at her, his eyes wide and terrified.  
  
“You made the right call,”  
  
“Thanks Princess,”

  


Keith told Coran the whole story while they were getting Shiro into one of the healing pods. Coran seemed completely flabbergasted that they had had a spy in their midst for so long.  
  
The doors to the room hissed open as Pidge and Hunk walked in. Pidge stopped to bow in front of Keith while Hunk eyed Shiro anxiously.  
  
“So it’s like… really him?” he asked.  
  
“Yea,” Keith said, ignoring Pidge.  
  
“The clone?” Pidge asked softly. Something about her tone made Keith think that she already knew what had happened.  
  
“Lance took care of him,”

  


Hunk cooked up a feast the day Shiro emerged from the healing pod.  
  
“Oh Pidge! I just want to… y’know… thank you for helping me with Operation Kuron,” Keith said.  
  
“Anything for you oh wise Galran Emperor,” Pidge said with a ridiculous bow. Keith closed his eyes and sighed heavily. When he opened his eyes he saw that everyone was staring at Shiro, and Shiro was staring at him.  
  
“Galran Emperor?” Shiro asked.  
  
“I may or may not have entered in an ancient Galran competition to become the new Emperor. And I may or may not have won,” Keith said.  
  
“Why didn’t you stop him?” Shiro demanded, looking at the other Paladins.  
  
“Shiro, buddy, you’ve missed out on a lot,”  
  
“It wasn’t like we knew what he was doing!” Pidge protested.  
  
“He was Blacks pilot!”  
  
The table fell silent again, none of them looking at Keith or Shiro. Even Allura and Coran were avoiding eye contact.  
  
“You… you were Blacks pilot, right?”  
  
“For a little bit, yea,” Keith said.  
  
“Till he got in with the Blade of Marmora and left us,” Hunk said.  
  
“HUNK!”  
  
“You what?!” Shiro demanded.  
  
“I thought that the Blade needed me more!” Keith defended himself.  
  
Shiro closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.  
  
“Then who piloted Black?”  
  
Once again the table fell silent. Shiro groaned and dragged his hand down his face.  
  
“ _The clone_!?”  
  
“In our defense we didn’t know he was a clone,”  
  
“This is unbelievable. I can’t believe you did this, Keith,”  
  
“Shiro should be Keith’s royal advisor,” Pidge said with a snicker. The table fell silent for the fourth time before they all burst into laughter at the idea.

  


The next day at breakfast, Allura presented them with yet another obstacle to overcome.  
  
“There’s another problem,” Allura said.  
  
“Oh no,” Hunk said quietly.  
  
“The Black Lion has shut down,”  
  
There was a collective groan from the table. Allura tried not to smile in sympathy. The Black Lion certainly was being… temperamental.  
  
“Do we have to go through this again?”  
  
“Keith piloted Black before,” Pidge pointed out.  
  
“You want me to pilot Black _and_ lead the Galra’s?” Keith asked sounding incredulous.  
  
“I wasn’t even a good leader!” Keith added when no one said anything.  
  
“He has a point,” Hunk said at last.  
  
“Thank you Hunk,” Keith said dryly.  
  
“Sorry buddy,” the yellow Paladin said with a shrug.  
  
“I’ve already tried getting the Black Lion to respond to me, but she won’t. You may be our only chance, Keith,” the Princess said.  
  
“Fine,”

  


The Black Lion did not respond to Keith. It was a little bewildering.  
  
“Is this because the last Galran Emperor you had turned evil?” Keith snarked as he sulked in the console. Still Black didn’t respond.  
  
“Fine! Whatever!”  
  
He jumped from her mouth and looked at the other Paladins, they looked as confused as he felt.  
  
“Allura?” Lance asked quietly.  
  
“Pidge,” the Princess said quietly.  
  
Lance stood between Shiro and Allura. He was nervous. What if they couldn’t find a new Paladin for Black? What if they had to bring someone new on to the team? What if they yelled at him like Kuron had?  
  
Pidge jumped down from Black and shook her head. Then it was Hunk’s turn. Lance shifted his weight from one leg to the other, the movement caused his hand to brush against Allura’s. Whatever apology he had ready died the second she took his hand in hers.  
  
“I’m worried as well,” she said quietly.  
  
Lance gave her hand a reassuring squeeze because he didn’t trust himself to respond.  
  
Hunk jumped down from Black.  
  
“Lance?”  
  
If Black didn’t wake up for him the first time, why would she now? Lance took a deep breath and walked toward the Black Lion. He climbed into her mouth and navigated his way to the center console.  
  
“Um. Hey. It’s me again,” he said.  
  
“I know I wasn’t worthy the first time and considering that you shut Keith out means I’m definitely not worthy but… you need a pilot, and I’d like to get the chance to prove myself,”  
  
The console lit up.

  


Keith closed his eyes and relaxed against his throne. It had been a long week, but thankfully things had sorted themselves out. Lance and Black were bonding, and for some unknown reason, Red had chosen Shiro to pilot her. Keith suspected it was because Red wanted to whip Shiro back into shape.  
  
Keith was looking forward to going back to kicking Zarkon Loyalist ass.  
  
“Emperor Keith,” Kolivan called.  
  
Keith opened his eyes to see a sentry-bot hauling in Lotor’s Generals. Haggar did not appear to be with them.  
  
“Here to try and double-cross me?” Keith drawled.  
  
The large one- Zethrid- hissed at him. Keith didn’t pay her any mind.  
  
“We just escaped from Haggar,” Acxa replied, a tight frown on her face.  
  
Keith rubbed his temples gently. He really didn’t want to have to deal with Lotor’s Generals, especially when he knew that they couldn’t be trusted. They had betrayed pretty much everyone they had worked for.  
  
“Acxa?” Krolia’s startled voice caused Keith to tear his gaze from the Generals and to his mother.  
  
“ _Mom_?” Acxa sounded just as stunned as Krolia had. Then what she had said caught up to Keith.  
  
Keith let out a heavy sigh and dropped his head into his hands. He _really_ didn’t want to deal with this.

**Author's Note:**

> [u all know Keith is the kind of hot head to partake in the Kral Zera](http://www.starsdustlance.tumblr.com)


End file.
